


Hot Pie Looked Like Hot Pie

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Prompt Fill, References to Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:25:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt fill by anon “Arya/Gendry/Hot Pie (SHIP= friendSHIP), 'If you can’t run, you crawl. If you can’t crawl— you find someone to carry you.'”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot Pie Looked Like Hot Pie

They find him at a time when they have all forgotten to count their years, in a place that had no name. But people still remember his name. He is the old man who sells his pies to sailors fresh to shore. His fingers are still dusty with flour but his cheeks- one ruddy, healthy looking- are now sunken.

The woman in charge of his boarding house defers quietly to Arya and Gendry. She has a feeling they are important, though it is only that- a feeling. She opens the door to his room where a single tallow candle lights the plaster, and her boarder’s breathing is peaceful. But there is the smell of piss and dirt, and it brings to both Arya and Gendry sensations that disturb their calm. To him, this room is a childhood spent in damp rooms with splintered walls and the smell of ale. To her, it speaks of dark spaces in Braavos, of whispers and blood between her fingers. It smelt of death, of a life that had become rotten.

Gendry has only seen Arya cry twice. Once on the birthing bed with their second with the pain (still, she refused the dreamwine), the other when she hears of Sansa’s passing (she went into the Weirwood, away from him). But here, she kneels beside Hot Pie and bursts into tears.

“The Maester says it will not be long.” The woman says, clicking her tongue as she did.

Gendry directs his men to carry him. Arya bites her lip until it is white, but Gendry feels a numbness inside of him. How old his friend had grown, how his weight now seemed to wrap cruelly around him where once it had been soft and sweet. He had been expecting that young boy they had left behind, not a boy lost underneath diseased joints and clouded eyes.

In the carriage Hot Pie manages to open his eyes to see them. Gendry smiles at the flicker of recognition and surprise in his eyes. Arya sits stiffly opposite them, removed from that first burst of emotion, hands clenched tight. In her mind the ghosts of her family return.

At night Hot Pie whimpers with the sores. Their Maester provides ointment and slips watered down wine between his lips. They both quietly think how cruel this death is. Death to them in the war had always been sudden, brief, finite. But now they document his deterioration and the threat of old age, and feel afraid.

///

On the day when he finally passes they take him to their lake. The water sparkles in the sunlight. Arya doesn’t know what to do with her body, doesn’t know whether she wants to cry or to scream, to beat Hot Pie senseless because _why why why is he doing this._ Gendry sits quietly beside him, remembering the last fitful days of his Mother’s life, and then the peace that came just before the end. He tells him of the fish in the river he had caught, and now and then Hot Pie offers a hushed word, a weak smile.

He had no last words of note, no words that the scribes would find worthy of documentation. Instead, he croaks out to Gendry that the secret of a good fish pie is to flake the meat.

That night they bury him under the Sign of the Seven, but Arya and Gendry attend to their own Gods. In the Weirwood Gendry lights a fire beside her, watches the colours of the flame warp and change. And she sits before her favourite Weirwood and watches the flames cast against its face, giving it warmth and life.

Yet between them, between their two Gods, they both quietly, wordlessly, eat slices of chicken pie.


End file.
